Hi all!With christmas coming up, I'm sure some of us will be wanting tocelebrate and make some christmasy arduino projects. Whether it isdecorations that react to something you do, or wierd flashy lights, you(should) be able to find inspiration here. To start off with, I made abicoloured LED flasher, that alternates colours between a string ofbi-coloured LEDs. Sadly, I've got no schematics, as I do not have aprogram to make them in. (Any suggestions?) I was thinking ofmounting them on a card board triangle to make a flashing christmas tree

Velleman also has a bunch of holiday LED kits (among many other things).Build up with the kids, use as inspiration for an arduino design, or treat as a inexpensive collection of parts and hack into something different :-)

several different starshttp://www.vellemanusa.com/us/enu/product/view/?id=522248http://www.vellemanusa.com/us/enu/product/view/?id=522251http://www.vellemanusa.com/us/enu/product/view/?id=522428http://www.vellemanusa.com/us/enu/product/view/?id=523250

and 2 different candleshttp://www.vellemanusa.com/us/enu/product/view/?id=522281http://www.vellemanusa.com/us/enu/product/view/?id=525536

"A bit hard when you are a kid!"Hard to tell that from your much more mature sounding initial post :-)

It can be a hassle rounding up all the parts to make something like this from scratch. These kits make it easy to have a little fun and to have something completed that can be put aside. Many home projects get bogged down when the design has been debugged, the protoboard is full of parts, and now its time to put it all into an enclosure and getting batteries installed, etc.I came across these recently at Stapleshttp://www.reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/uk/"really useful boxes" and have mounted some stuff. Easy to work with plastic, variety of sizes (and color, depending on the size), not very much money, and can be picked up locally if you have a Staples or maybe nearby. Lot easier to envision your design going into something when you can hold the box in your hand.

The big one is the fencing (touche!) scoring machine I am making.2 digits of score lights for each side (team event can go to 45)small display counts 1 to 9 (3 minute periods)middle 4 digits are time remaining (max is 10:00 break between an individuals events, so 4th digit is overkill really).Bottom left/bottom right:4 pairs of lights indicate: warning card, penalty card, grounded, and priority.Group of 3 is off target light or broken wireGroup of 2 is touch scored.

Even smaller box is remote display of the touch, offtarget, ground lights. Right now have the cards mounted with a Promini in a stretch pencil case from Staples, kind of flimsy, but works for now. Gonna try 2 of these mounted at the ends of a small board, Promini will go in the bottom of one to receive serial commands from big to turn lights on/off.

And its really just my version of commercially available scoring machines, with the operation programmed to do things that I would like as a referee vs what they do now.

I'm still working on getting the touch lights working. I started with just reading the serial output of another scoring machine to turn on the remote lights, then added to it to show the score & time, then while waiting for that machine to be updated to accept time start/stop commands (so I didn't need 2 remotes), I created my own time running code, and am now adding the touch functionality to make it a totally independent machine. Somewhere in there I came up with the remote also. Started just getting wireless to talk between 2 arduinos with the example virtual wire, then added the keypad library code to be able to send specific characters, then added sleep mode and wake on interrupt, then changed to lower voltage promini with Li battery, then added battery charging circuit.

So, small steps, get it working, add to it :-).

I have code in place to sound a buzzer, waiting on a little speaker to arrive to add that in.Am working on touch circuits now. Have something working pretty well for epee (fairly simple, button closure on the end of the weapon, is either closed against non-ground (good score light), or against something grounded (so no score light). Trying to get more comlicated sabre & foil working, where you have to score on opponents lame (outer metalllic jacket over the fencing uniform), but have situation where if your weapon touches your own lame lights have to off, but can score & be scored on while that is happening, and there are strange time restrictions that the code has to account for.

Sorry again. I forgot to say how it works. (oops!) [smiley=huh.gif] [smiley=huh.gif] [smiley=huh.gif]

A random number is generated between 15 and 500.Pin 2 is set high. (Pin 2 turns on a transistor, turning on the LEDs.)The random number is used as a delay time.Pin 2 is set low.A new random number is made.The random number is used as a delay time.The cycle starts again.